Confirmed Opt-In Liked by Consumers, Sparsely Used by Marketers

A recent online survey of 523 e-mail marketers conducted by eROI, an e-mail marketing agency, found that just 30% of the respondents indicated that they use confirmed (or double) opt-in for signing up consumers.

While most e-mail marketers have accepted confirmed opt-in as the standard that should be held to, Jeff Mills, an analyst at eROI, indicates that some business may be hesitant to implement the technique because of the added burden it places on the consumer signing up, which could potentially lead to less subscriptions than a single opt-in approach would render.

Mills also noted that the 30% of marketers who do not remove the names of those who opt-out from other systems “have the possibility of not adhering to CAN-SPAM compliance.”

Dylan Boyd, VP of sales and strategy at eROI, added that this can also hurt a company’s brand.

Ninety percent of marketers do not follow up with those who opt-out to ascertain whether or not another channel of communication is preferred.

Incentives are a key way to draw subscribers, with 88% of respondents offering newsletter subscriptions, 29% offering access to preferred content, 24% offering discounts and/or coupons, and 22% offering contests.

A new survey conducted by Merkle Inc. also focused on opt-in e-mail marketing, finding that permission-based e-mail marketing makes consumers feel that they are in control of their inboxes. Eighty-eight percent of the 2,512 respondents in the U.S. indicated that they feel mostly or completely in control of their e-mail inboxes, which is a nine point increase from the responses observed in 2004.

Meanwhile, Merkle Inc. also found that 58% of respondents said that e-mail was a good way for companies to keep in touch with them. This figure was pegged at 45% three years ago.

About half of the respondents indicated that they had actually made an online purchase as a result of opt-in e-mail marketing during the past year, which reflected a three percentage point increase from a year ago.

There is also a stern warning in Merkle’s findings. About 32% of respondents said that they had stopped doing business with at least one company because of poor e-mail marketing practices.

Sources:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629205

http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/consumers041808/